Ruahine Grand Traverse Ruahine Grand Traverse - New Zealand ...

By Mark SmithThe Blue Ice MiceStrike Again- An account of SnowCraft 2 held in August.This last weekend was spent at MtRuapehu studying the fine art of AlpineSnow Craft with Dennis. This class washeld as part of the NZAC and it lived upto it’s name. We learned about settingup belay points, pitches, bollardsand my favourite, emergency sheltersall with the amazing backdrop of thealpine terrain.I’m only partially ashamed to saythat the initial climb up kicked my ass...again. We all carried a huge loadand I only had my tiny shoulders. Coldweather gear, lighting, helmet, goggles,food, crampons, ice axe, ice hammer,a transponder (for avalanches), snowprobes, shovel, water ....ugh I realisedlater that I didn’t need this, a heavy fulldry60 metre rope, harness, carabiners,webbing, snow stakes, a big pack,sleeping bag, sleeping pad, bivvy bag,and the makings for a special Saturdaynight dinner split amongst us all. I carrieda bottle of wine, toilet paper, andtwo capsicum. I’m sure I must have leftsome stuff out - anyway it was heavy.The walk up to Delta Ridge Hut wason, but the good news was that it wasgood snow, not much ice. Oh, and itwas raining changing to snow. Oh,and it was pitch dark, our head torcheslighting the way.I mistakenly thought the hut was goingto be rougher than it actually was. Ithas heating, cooking facilities, water,bunks with mattresses, toilets and adrying room which was very useful.It was also good to see so many smilingfamiliar faces from the SnowCraft 1course held a few months back.As much as I had my ass kicked onthe way up, I seriously dug the technicalaspects of what was going on. Webuilt a snow bollard and I jumped at thechance to be the first to give it a go. Asnow bollard is basically a groove youcut in the snow in which you put yourrope before you rappel off a cliff. Thinkof a snow column with your ropewrapped around it and you’ve got thepicture.We learned about setting up belaypoints. It’s simply amazing how strongsnow can be. For each anchor we setup four strong men pulled as hard asthey could downhill and they didn’teven wiggle.With little time left on the first day wemoved on to the highlight of the weekendas far as I was concerned. Thiswas emergency shelters, which youcan safely translate to snow caves. Asmentioned earlier snow can be exceedinglystrong, on top of this it is exceptionallymoldable. Dig a cave leavingleaving 300 mm of ceiling and you canwalk on top of it yet still have light filtering through.As a demonstration, the lead instructorbuilt a satisfactory emergency shelterin four minutes. It wasn’t big, but itwould save your life in a storm. All wecould see of him was his pack whichhe placed in the door way to stop thewind.Our Taj Mahal creation built for six tookthree hours. A tunnel about the sizeof a person on all fours angled up forabout 2 metres led to a bed chamberhigh enough to sit up in, but not muchmore. It was a wet job, I wanted to takeoff my coat but it was too wet to dothat. It was already quite a bit warmerinside than outside. We didn’t completeit by night fall so we finished it by thelight of our head torches.Below: Digging out the snow cave.6